Phelps has perfected art of perfection
By Joe Posnanski | The Kansas City Star
BEIJING - Michael Phelps did not look happy. Of course, he did just swim 200 meters of butterfly, which is roughly the equivalent of crawling across a football field covered in molten lava. And he said the last 100 meters his goggles filled with water, which added a fun fish bowl effect to the race. So that played a part in his reaction.
Still, there was a surprising lack of joy on his face when it ended. He won the race. He broke his third individual world record of these Games. He became the greatest Olympian of them all. He ripped off his water-logged goggles. He looked like he had just been turned down for a bank loan.
"That was wild to watch," said Melvin Stewart, who won the Olympic 200-meter butterfly in 1992 and once held the world record himself. "It's like he put it on auto pilot. It's like he said, 'Yeah, I'm going to go out there and win gold and set a world record, but I'm really thinking about the relay I have to swim."
The English language is running out of words to describe just how good Michael Phelps is at this swimming thing. On Wednesday, he swam the 200-meter butterfly in 1:52.03, a world record, his fourth gold medal of his games, the record-setting 10th gold medal of his Olympic career. Four others had won nine golds: Americans Mark Spitz (swimming) and Carl Lewis (track and field), Finland's Paavo Nurmi (track and field) and the Soviet Union's Larissa Latynina (gymnastics). That seemed like a good day's work.
Then there was the relay. Almost precisely one hour later, Phelps led off the remarkable United States 800-meter relay team, which won gold by more than five seconds and blasted the world record by almost that much. Phelps swam the fastest 200 meter split in history (of course) and gave his teammates a two-and-a-half second lead. This happened barely 10 minutes after he stood on the medal stand to collect his butterfly gold.
So, if you're counting, Phelps has now won five gold medals at these Games (all in world record time). He has now won 11 gold medals in his career. That's two more gold medals, incidentally, than the entire nation of India, which has more than one billion people. He has now won 13 Olympic medals overall, an American record.
And it's hard figure what's the most impressive part of all this. It's all so mind boggling. He's obviously the fastest swimmer, the best conditioned swimmer, he makes the best turns, he uses the most powerful strokes, he's the most competitive son of a gun on the blocks. When I asked Melvin Stewart when he thought Phelps had the 200-meter butterfly won, he did not hesitate: "Before it began."
Maybe that might get at the most impressive part of all. He's had more impressive races, of course. But there was something about the businesslike way Phelps went out and won his best event, the 200-meter butterfly. It's like the line they used to say about Jack Nicklaus: Jack knew he was going to win, all the other golfers knew Jack was going to win and, more, Jack knew that they knew he was going to win.
Phelps, too, has taken the mystery out of the 200-meter fly. Understand, Melvin Stewart dedicated his life to this event - he spent countless hours in the pool so he could get good at that one race. He used the best technology available and trained precisely so that he could shave off every possible 100th of a second. He thought about the 200-meter butterfly more or less ever hour of every day. Now Phelps is swimming the race four and five seconds faster than he ever did.
"It's amazing," Stewart says. What happened is Phelps reinvented the stroke. The 200-meter butterfly was Phelps first great race; he set the world record when he was just 15-years-old. He has now lowered the world record seven times. How can he swim this race so much faster than anyone else who ever lived? Stewart compares Phelps butterfly stroke to the tightening of a rubber band.
"When a rubber band is a little loose, and you flick it, it bounces back and forth pretty slowly," he says. "But then you tighten in, and you flick it, it goes vibrates fast. ... That's what Michael did for the butterfly. He tightened it. He flattened it out. His stroke is quicker than ours, smaller, he's like a fish, like a dolphin, he just rides the water. It's incredible. He's perfected the stroke."
That's the word. Perfect. When he swims the butterfly, it's something close to perfect. And like Nicklaus, he knows it. Einstein proposed that nothing moves faster than the speed of light. Phelps knows at the start of the race that nothing swimming butterfly can move faster than him for 200 meters.
And even though he has had more amazing swims at these Olympics - including that incredible 200-meter freestyle swim he had in the relay an hour later - in some ways this was the most impressive thing of all. He went out there for the race of pain, he dealt with goggles filled with water, he took control from the start, broke the world record, and then he went on with his business of trying to win eight gold medals.
"I'm almost at a loss for words," Phelps said. And he wasn't the only one.
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